Contents

This is the only reference to map layouts in the entire article. It deserves its own section because at first look, this seems to be simple, but in all reality, it isn't.

For many of these gametypes, especially the CTF-based ones, it's better to plan the map instead of doing one base and replicating it. Game editors don't get along well with brush/patch rotation. However, if you insist on converting a FFA map into CTF, here's the process:[1]

Before doing the rotation, make sure you have nothing filtered off.

Before making a mass selection, select and hide geometry on the existing base side that already exists in the area we are intending to place the cloned base. (The central area)

Draw out a large brush over the existing base, then do a "select inside" and then a "invert selected", then "hide selected".

Tidy up the parts of the base to be selected, hiding each brush that isn't going to be selected.

When only the parts of the base we require are left, select all, and then unhide the rest of the map.

Clone the base. Switch to top down view, if you haven't already. Rotate the selection 180 degrees.

Zoom in and move the selection carefully into place. This is by no means an easy task, take your time and use a lot of care.

Models and other brushes and patches won't rotate automatically with the rest of the map. You must rotate them manually. Some models may also need a remap with new textures in order to make them fit into the bases' visual coherence.

Place red and blue colored decorations (tapestry, arrows, etc.) around the arena, to help people find and distinguish the two bases. Decal arrows guiding to those bases should be added as well. To add to the overall effect, the colour of the base light entities should be done in such a way to reflect the teams' colours. Cyan for the blue base and orange for the red base should work. Both the texture work and the lighting should be used together to reflect the teams' bases.[2]

Some advices on this:

Move away the cloned base from the rest of the map and save the level with a temporary name. This way, if you make a mistake, selecting the base a second time will be straight forward using the select inside tool.

Add location names in the maps (like "blue base", "red armor", "bridge", "central square", etc.) by using the target_location entity. After doing this, during team-based gametypes, players will be informed of the location of their team-mates, in the team overlay infos, and when they use the "chat-team" feature.

Weapon/item placement should be even, even in non-symmetrical team-based maps, with not-so-powerful weapons in bases and very powerful weapons in the middle in order to promote aggressive play and local side fights for powerful items. Also, powerups shouldn't be in bases, but rather in the middle area.[2]

Team-based games are best suited to real players (although if you optimise your level for bots well enough they should give you a reasonable contest). If possible, beta test the level against humans in order to get a real feel for how well the level plays.

General/respawning spawnpoint for non-objective based gametypes (FFA, TDM, LMS, 1on1) and Single Domination. The "INITIAL" flag ("spawnflags" "1") allows players and spectators to spawn in these points. Id Software recommends this over the old info_player_start. There should be at least 16 per map, without restrictions.

Initial spawning points for CTF-based modes. There are two of them: team_CTF_blueplayer and team_CTF_redplayer. Players joining each team will spawn in one of these points.[4] There should be at least 32 of such points, 16 per team, located near the team's own bases or inside them.[5]

Double DOM-specific team spawnpoints. There should be at least 32 of such points, 16 per team, located far from both points.

Independently from the kind of spawn points you decide to use for DD mode, you should make players not spawn right next to the DD points, otherwise it may be almost impossible to keep both points for 10 consecutive seconds.

These are the key entities of the game, used to mark where the key objectives are.

In all of them, avoid the use of the "SUSPENDED" spawnflag, even if the editor and the map seem to allow its use, as bots cannot reach suspended objectives, and they must be reachable by players of both teams alike. Unlike weapons and other items placement, for gametype objectives it's recommended to perfectly align their "origin" point with the ground.

Domination neutral point. It changes to the team color of the last player who touched it. It is used in Domination mode, NOT in Double Domination mode.

You can place up to six of them in the map (if there are more than three, scoring occurs every four seconds instead of two), and you can (should) identify them with distinctive names by setting the "message" key.

Flags for CTF, One Flag CTF and CTF Elimination gametypes. In Double Domination, red and blue flags automatically become the A and B control points (remember: B point spawns in the place of the Blue flag). Additionally, there's a "neutral" flag only available for One Flag CTF.

For One Flag CTF, the flag should be placed in an area that is roughly equidistant from both bases and can be easily reached by players from either team.[6]

Skull receptacles for Harvester, and Overload power diamond sources. Also commonly used as flag bases. The "neutral" obelisk is the Skull Generator for Harvester.

They should work correctly out-of-the-box, without the need to tweak their models. Simply place the entities aligning their "origin point" with the ground (this is very important to prevent problems to bots in Overload mode) and don't worry if models look like "buried in the ground" in the editor.

The skull generator in Harvester tosses skulls about it to a maximum distance of 96 units. Id Software recommends a radius of 104 to 128 units as a minimum. As a rule, the generator should drop skulls only in a places accessible to the players. Skulls should not drop out into death fog or the void. Also the generator should be placed in an area that is roughly equidistant from both bases and can be easily reached by players from either team.[6]

For Overload, when designing the base for the placement of the skull obelisk, don’t make it easy for attackers to shoot the obelisk from protected locations.[6]

Sometimes, mappers want to limit some items to a few gametypes. Each item has a flag, called "gametype", which determines in which gametype it should spawn.

There's also an OA-specific key, "!gametype", which works as the opposite. Every item marked with this key won't spawn in the marked gametypes. This can be useful to provide compatibility with future gametypes, but one has to take in account that this negative key didn't exist in the original Quake 3 game, so while playing with old mods based upon Q3 game logic, it will be ignored, and thus that entity will be shown in ALL gametypes.

Note that both "gametype" and "!gametype" are intended for weapon/item usage, NOT for key objective entities, as these may be required for some mods. Ditto for the "notq3a" and "notta" keys, which are now useless since the Missionpack items are already included into OA itself, and may also be required for some mods.

Mappers can set their creations so they can only be selected via menu or voted by way of the ".arena" file. This file is placed in the "scripts/" folder of the .pk3 archive. The line which sets the gametypes this map supports is "type".

Here are the "type" denominations for each gametype to be supported via menu: